If you buy an apartment in England, the chances are you aren’t actually “buying” it at all. In most cases, you’re paying the real owner for the right to live there for a set period. “Leaseholds” are one of the oddest, and most contested, quirks of Britain’s ancient property laws. Critics who see them as a license for landlords to rip off their tenants have convinced the Labour government to overhaul the system. Here’s why campaign groups have called it an “end of history moment.”
